


Seasons of Love

by Clockwork



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Multi, Post Series, everyone loves karen, predefenders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 19:37:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8026402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clockwork/pseuds/Clockwork
Summary: Reopening Nelson and Murdock. Three endings for the three men in her life.





	Seasons of Love

_How do you measure - measure a year?_

Music had been softly playing from the tiny speaker on Karen’s phone for the better part of an hour. It was a New York playlist she’d found on Spotify that had kept her company for many a night working late at the Bulletin. Now it was the source for energy and company while she worked to try and pull Nelson and Murdock’s offices back together. 

It almost felt too good to be true, and not yet real. Months after Matt had found her in that very office on Christmas Eve it looked as if Foggy was back, as if maybe, just maybe they could come together again. All three of them. 

Not that Karen thought it would be easy. Matt was still having troubles with accepting Karen’s concern, even if she tried not to hover too much when he was looking beaten and bruised. And she hadn’t given up her job with the Bulletin and wasn’t sure she would ever. Maybe it was pushing the envelope on conflict of interest, but she knew that it was just another conflict in her life and that was something Karen was learning to live with.

_In daylights - in sunsets. In midnights - in cups of coffee._

The words came to her without thinking about it. Singing as she went through the folders, deciding what to box, what to keep, and what would be needed when the office reopened again. 

Soon enough she wouldn’t be there alone. It wasn’t just Nelson and Murdock anymore. Maybe not even just Daredevil overlooking the city. Claire had called, and Matt had shared some of it with her, and life was changing. Again. But they were together. All the pain and loss, and the destruction of their lives with their city, of Castle’s war on the city and Elektra’s life and loss, and now they were moving forward. 

Again.

Karen didn’t want to think about how many times they would have to do this. To start over. To pick themselves up off the ground and do it all over again. Except it didn’t matter how many times they had to do it, just so long as they kept doing it.

“In truths that she learned, or in times that he cried. In bridges he burned, or the way that she died.”

Belting out the words, letting herself release the emotions coursing through her in that moment, letting them become part of her, part of her life, and thinking about the next year, about the last year, and all that had changed and would changed.

**Matt**

Coming back to the office felt like home, it felt right, and it was terrifying all in the same breath. Facing death was normal for Matt these days. Facing the emotion in Karen’s eyes, the apologies to be made the Foggy, and all that had brought them back together though? That was something else entirely. It was family and love, and those things never went well for Matt. Hadn’t before and he feared they never would.

But then Claire had called. Then there had been Jessica and Luke, and the newest legacy of villainy in the city in the form of this Kilgrave. Was Claire right? Was there something that together they could do as things in New York continued to get worse? He wasn’t sure, but he knew she was right in one thing.

They had to try.

He had heard the music from the street, the sound of Karen’s voice - slightly off key but full of emotions - as he came down the hallway. Pausing there at the door, smiling as he could see her swaying to the music in silhouette through the glass insert of the door. 

Christmas Eve he had laid his heart on the line with Karen. Today she was there, singing, making things right once more. He didn’t deserve this, hadn’t been sure she would come back to them. 

He thought to open the door, to step in and see her dancing as she made things right. Instead he stood there, his hand on the knob and he just listened. Listened to the sound of her voice, the emotion so thickly ladened in her words, and let her have this moment. A moment of sounding happy, sounding as if she belonged there in that place at that moment, and he only hoped she always would.

**Foggy**

He carried large coffees in both hands, his satchel a heavy weight at his side. Walking away from the future Foggy had always dreamt of before he met Matt had been easier than Foggy would have thought. It wasn’t walking away, it was going back to the life he was meant to have.

Doing the right thing. Protecting the innocent. Trying not to die because doing those things meant the wrong people saw you as a target. So the last wasn’t that much fun, and not something he’d wish on anyone, but going back to his life was something that Foggy did eagerly.

Knowing that Karen would beat him there, even before he heard her singing. Smiling as he set the cups down in the hallway, hand on the knob, pausing for dramatic effect.

“It's time now - to sing out tho' the story never ends. Let's celebrate, remember a year in the life of friends.”

His voice was rich, knowing the lyrics without even hearing the phone’s speakers. Taking Karen’s hands before she could react, twirling them both around the room.

Laughter tinged her tones, fingers clinging to his as they danced and they sang.

“Measure, measure your life in love.”

**Frank**

She never knew he was there. She never knew the days he had spent there by the roof, waiting to see if she came back. Trailing her was easy, but staying there on that roof, it felt less like he was stalking her.

So to arrive that evening to hear music through the open window, the laughter of others, of the three of them like they were when they first came to his hospital room, he realized it was maybe what he had been waiting to hear. 

He even knew the song, though he didn’t know the lyrics. Marie had loved Broadway tunes, and he’d heard this one enough to recognize that was where it came from. Enough to remember the name of the musical.

Karen never saw him come or go, Frank made sure of that. Maybe she would think they were from Matt, or Foggy. Maybe she’d know from the little doodles on the envelope, a skull and a gun done in black ink. Maybe she’d never notice them but the night she went to the show with Nelson on her arm, he had followed her, watched the delight on her face as she exited the theater, and he had seen her home. Even if she had never seen him.


End file.
